Monkeyfish
Rick turned his head and spat; the air in this place tasted as bad as it smelled.
“What the hell are they doing up there?” he asked.
Hank, who was taking yet another break, shook his head in response.
“Man,” he said, speaking around an unfiltered Marlboro, “the first thing they shoulda told ya was don’t ask.” Hank smoked constantly. He said it helped him deal with the smell on these cleanout jobs. Never mind, thought Rick, that it added one more unwholesome scent to the bouquet of stink permeating the sewers.
As he stood knee-deep in acid-green water, jamming a hooked pole up into feeder pipes, Rick wondered if the money was worth enduring this foulness, but the money was good. It should be–GENETEDYNE was the biggest privately funded lab in the world. Rick had never heard of them, except to see people complain there was no oversight. He didn’t really care, though. Scientists were people too, and private contractor work paid a hell of a lot better than he’d made as a caretaker. Still, he thought–as his hook encountered the blockage again–what were they flushing?
“There’s something big stuck up there, Hank. Give me a hand.”
The big man stood up from his place against the wall, pitched his smoke into the water, and added his pole to the mix. It was crowded with the two of them jostling for position inside the ten-inch pipe, but Rick hoped that one of their spikes would catch, they’d get the works free, and then they could knock off.
In the next moment, what had started out as a mundane, disgusting day in the sewer turned into a full fledged nightmare. Something in the dark, sludge filled pipe above their heads began screaming. The sound was like nothing Rick had ever heard. It was a wheezy, garbled sound. Whatever it was, it sounded pissed off.
Hank walked under the pipe and turned his face to the ceiling to peer inside. He shone his Maglite up into the depths.
“What the fu– ”
The thing cut off his words as it slid out of the hole and landed on Hank’s forehead. Hank screamed. Rick screamed. The thing screamed louder, and began tearing hunks from Hank’s face with teeth that looked like broken sewing needles. Rick couldn’t move; he was galvanized with shock, disbelief, and a weird, panicked curiosity.
“Get it off!” cried Hank, flailing around, trying to keep his balance. “Get it off!” He whacked the skinny green-furred hand of the monster with the flashlight. It let out another high-pitched keening wail, and bit down again. When it had raised its head, Rick saw a mashed-in, simian nose, covered with face blood. There was a queer, malevolent look of intelligence in the muddy brown eyes that stared wall-eyed from either side of the thing’s conical head. It raised its skinny, rudimentary arms and raked three scaly fingernails across Hank’s shoulder. Hank bellowed through a mouthful of gore.
Rick came to life–he swung his spiked pole around like a baseball bat. The hook caught the thing’s hindquarters. It screeched, whipping its fish-like tail back and forth, struggling to get free. A moment later, it dropped off the pole and into the water. Rick jabbed it again, again and again until it stopped moving.
When he pulled the body from the water, his heart nearly stopped. Amongst its trailing lump of black intestines was a red-gold translucent sac full of eggs. Even in the dim light of the sewer, Rick could make out movement in the tiny orbs. Eggs were falling freely from a rip in the pouch, and floating away into the river.
He pulled his cell phone out. The first call he made was to get an ambulance for poor, bleeding Hank. Next, he’d snap a photo of the carcass and send it to their employer.
For once, it was someone else’s turn to take care of the shit.
